You know, birds and tides and things: Sunday

Jon Carroll
| on November 5, 2015

It was our last official bay walk. We’d be doing it again, of course, but strictly as civilians; the rise and fall of civilizations would not depend on our appraisals. But it was still bittersweet. I wondered what I’d do with the ideas cluttering up my brain with no release.

I’d swell up and die because of the ideas. Good ideas, bad ideas — it doesn’t matter to hydraulic pressure. When your brain canals become clogged with too much thinking, your eyes fall out. If that happens, I can get a book out of it.

We went back to Benicia a third time. The residents of Benicia are a proud bunch. The town was the state capital for two years; it was a shipping port and naval base; it was and to some extent still is a vibrant arts community. And yet all I could talk about was the huge vacant lot at the east end of town and the tchotchke shops in the renovated downtown.

I liked the vacant lot, by the way. Native wildflowers, industrial remnants, a few homeless folks, a young couple looking for privacy. It was unsavory, so no one went there. It had funkiness and serenity in equal measure. But a lot of people don’t think of their vacant lots as precious.

It was suggested, several times, that I go to Benicia State Park. So off we went, singing a hearty song and listening to podcasts of “This American Life.” We didn’t look the directions up; we figured, how hard could it be? Go west of Benicia, look for a sign or something. And we found the sign, but maybe we missed the second sign and soon we were lost.

But how hard could it be? Just turn south and look for the bay. It’s gotta be there; it’s what keeps Benicia from bumping up against Martinez. So we did that. Sure, OK, there were a few problems. No bay, just endless suburbs. We may have passed the same Starbucks three different times — or perhaps it was three different Starbucks.

We found a street called Bayview. That seemed promising, but its promise was not fulfilled. We reached a development with streets named Spindrift and Nautilus and Seashell — that was even more encouraging. But it turned into a symphony of cul-de-sacs.

We caved. As we so often do, we humbly asked our phone to get us out of this mess. The phone loves to be needed. “Drive 100 feet south on Dawkins, then turn right,” it said, brimming with quiet confidence. Meekly, we did as we were told. And finally, some distance away, there was the park.

And I slipped comfortably into my bay-walking mode.

We walked down to the water’s edge. There were an unusual number of egrets around, and one cormorant who thought his isolation might reduce the competition for fish. The fishermen we talked to (coolers and canvas chairs, long poles with metal holders stuck into the sand, a few newspapers, whether for reading or wrapping I couldn’t tell) presented an opposite point of view.

“Nothing today,” said the first one. “Gettin’ skunked here. But that guy” — he pointed to a silhouette on a far rock — “got five salmon today.”

“Is that true?” we asked the second guy.

“No salmon,” he said. “It’s too late in the season. Good day during the run, though, we can get 30 easy.” (That’s well above the legal limit; on the other hand, I was talking to a fisherman.) “But we’re fishing for stripers, mostly. Got a few of those.”

We walked on. We rounded a corner and saw the Carquinez Bridge stretched across the horizon. A wind came up and rustled our hair. We looked up the shoreline, saw a few chunks of concrete and some rotting pilings.

This is a theme of our walks. We have never found a pristine bit of the shoreline. It was all industry once, usually something to do with shipping or petroleum storage or railroad maintenance. Industry has gone wherever it is that industry goes, and humans are encouraging nature to take back the land — within reason, of course, because humans still need trails and the occasional bench.

It’s useful to be on the side of nature once in a while. Encourage those native weeds — sorry, I mean grasses — to re-enter the landscape. Create habitats for small creatures essential to the functioning of a living bay. Let nature’s own nontoxic rain cleanse the landscape.

We mounted a small hill, sat on some rocks and stared out across the water. Two trains (one freight, one Amtrak) appeared to be on a collision course on the far shoreline. They both slowed down, whistling at each other. Then they both stopped, and the echoes of their whistles lasted a long time.

As they came nearer, Alice could hear him sighing as though his heart would break. She pitied him deeply. “What is his jcarroll@sfchronicle.com